A data warehouse is typically composed of one or more databases that store data that a company accumulates and uses when making management decisions. Data access from a data warehouse is conventionally accomplished using data queries to the data warehouse.
Many business applications that require access to relational or object databases within a data warehouse utilize a data access objection (DAO). Within the DAO an application programming interface (API) such as a Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) provides the capability to execute queries, for example structure query language (SQL) queries, to a data warehouse.
When a data stream, such as a stream of stock quotes for a particular stock on a stock exchange, is stored in a data warehouse, access of portions of the data stream to perform calculations on “sliding-window” segments of the data can be cumbersome. This is because access to such data streams can require a large number of queries to the data warehouse. Each query requires system overhead such as query set-up and query tear-down.